


Unzip My Body, Take My Heart Out

by TriplePirouette



Series: (s)Aints [3]
Category: Operation: Endgame (2010), Ravenous (1999)
Genre: Bloodplay, Cannibalism, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-27
Updated: 2012-09-27
Packaged: 2017-11-15 03:54:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriplePirouette/pseuds/TriplePirouette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her hands fluttered around his shoulders, unsure of what to do. Nothing made sense. Was this hell? Was it purgatory? Had she really died?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unzip My Body, Take My Heart Out

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Cannibal fic. So, yeah. All that implies. No smut, but explicit in its own right, I’d go with a soft R rating. 
> 
> AN: This if for the tiny little corner of the Rumbelle fandom that ships every RC character with every EdR character. You guys are amazing and awesome and I love writing for and with you. Title is lyrics from Ramalama Bang Bang by Rosin Murphy
> 
> Part 3 of my Hiero/Ives Series (aka the part that tells you what happened after Love Me Dead)

Hiero gasped for breath, coming to with the feel of fire burning through her back. It hurt, it hurt more than anything she’d ever known and she screamed as loud as she could, thrashing her body. Water sloshed around her, echoing in the room and the sound of her body hitting the big metal tub did nothing to calm her. All she felt was searing, burning pain, more than when she’d been actually cut. She knew this pain. It was salt and lemon and vinegar and cruelty being pushed into her open wounds. She’d done it for fun once upon a time, but in tiny spurts and curious explorations. Never like this.

Hands caught her around her shoulders, pressing her down, the voice that spoke to her calm and commanding, but this time she couldn’t listen to him. She couldn’t. It hurt.

“Stop!” he roared, louder than she expected, loud enough to make her freeze in shock. Her eyes fluttered open, panic stilling her as much as it had forced her to kick and scream. It was Ives. Ives had her.

They’d somehow survived.

A deep breath shuddered in then out as she tried to calm herself. He was familiar, he was safe, and she wanted to finally, finally be calm. But this… this was familiar, too.

Her hands fell on his wrists, wrists that were attached to arms that held her in place in this searing, burning tub while she was nearly fully dressed. Her eyes went wide, her jaw stuttering. “No. No, please, no, no…” Even though she’d never been to his most recent home, it didn’t matter where he lived. He always had a room like this. Small, dark and covered in plastic, with a sink and a drain in the floor and a butchers block next to a big metal tub; a big metal tub that she was in, that he was holding her down in. She’d seen this room, this tub more than once: it was always filled with limbs and cuts of meat sitting in brine, curing and flavoring them.

He was always so damn proud of it, and now she was on the wrong side of his pride. Her heartbeat quickened before it had even fully slowed, and she couldn’t bear how this broke her heart. Her hands tightened around his wrists, trying to push them away, trying to make any kind of difference in the leverage he had on her.

“Please…” she whimpered, not flailing but still struggling, still pushing against his hold on her in the tub as water sloshed over the edges. She didn’t know why he was doing this, but she wouldn’t resign herself to be  _flavored._ She had fought this hard, this long, she would not die by his hand.

Of all the ways she’d ever imagined herself dying, it had never been at his hand.

She saw the moment the panic in her eyes finally registered for him. Ives pulled his hands back like he’d been burned as the realization dawned on his face, his jaw dropping and his eyes softening. After a second he reached down, hauling her up instead, wrapping his arms around her and holding her to him as she shifted to kneel in the tub. “Oh fuck, fuck. No. No. I wasn’t. No.” He buried his nose in her hair, kissing over her cheeks and across her face where frantic tears had slipped out. “Shit, no, I- No.” Her hands fluttered around his shoulders, unsure of what to do. Nothing made sense. Was this hell? Was it purgatory? Had she really died? He murmured to her, soft, soothing things between curses and held her close, but he’d just had her in his tub, in some kind of stinging brine, her clothes clinging to her and dripping red rivulets back into the tub.

Finally, she wrapped her arms around him, clinging to his shoulders in desperation. The pain wasn’t as unbearable here, out of the brine, and maybe if she could remind him, if she could show him she was worth the trouble, he wouldn’t eat her.

“I don’t have a bathtub,” he muttered finally, whispering it over and over in her ear as he held her close, his clothes soaked to the bone now. “I don’t have a tub and you couldn’t stand in the shower and your clothes are crusted to you.”

He pulled away, framing her face with his hands. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wanted to get these damned clothes off you.”

Hiero looked at him, saw the panic in his eyes, and tried, tried to make some sense of what he was saying. “You- you weren’t flavoring me?” she asked cautiously, afraid of the answer.

He laughed, he laughed and sagged in her arms, relief flooding his face as he kissed her quickly. “Oh fuck no,” he breathed out, far too happy for her taste. “No, your shirt and sweater, when your back started to heal they got attached to the scabs. I couldn’t pull them off without opening it again. I just wanted to soak them off of you.”

Her nose scrunched up, tears slipping from her eyes. “But it hurt.”

He darted his tongue out, tasting the drips from her hair, his face slipping to frustration as he rolled the drips around on his tongue. “It wasn’t clean enough. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” She’d never heard him apologize more. He never apologized. Maybe once in their whole history she’d heard him say that he was sorry, but he’d said it over and over in the last few minutes and from the look in his eyes he meant it, he really meant it. He slipped his arms around her tighter, lifting her from the tub and setting her on the plastic covered floor. She dripped herself a puddle, but he set to fix everything right away. He pulled her stockings from her hips as she lay, little strength to do anything but watch him. “I should have done this in the first place.” Her skirt came next as she watched him, blinking furiously to keep the weak brine out of her eyes.

He left her lace panties, but rolled her over and laid her down on her stomach. “I just thought, I thought the other way would be easier…”

She tried not to startle when he pulled out a long, sharp pair of scissors, her heart beating fast and hard in her chest again. Was this how they felt? Did they all feel terror like this? Pain? Fear? Did her marks know what was coming? Could Ives’ kills imagine how he would carefully butcher them, how he would bite and taste and lick and chew their flesh? Was this what it felt like, watching him stalk towards her with the scissors glinting in the light, wondering, not knowing, fearing?

Her hand shot out, wrapping around his ankle, her eyes drifted to his. She needed him to know she was still afraid. She needed him to know that she’d seen his silver tongue at work too many times, seen that smile of his take in too may people, seen the way he could lie so effortlessly… she needed him to know that she was the one thing she’d never been before: afraid of him.

She could see sadness in his eyes. Resignation. They swirled dark and heavy and she didn’t know what that look meant, she’d never seen it on his face before. She’d had hope for a second, when he’d held her and apologized and pulled her from his tub, but it had fled her. “Pray, my dear,” he whispered huskily, taking her hand from his ankle and spreading it flat on the floor, the silver scissors slipping close to her fingers.

They cut.

She wanted to say she wasn’t surprised when they didn’t dig into her flesh, but that would be a lie. She watched as he carefully cut through her sweater, the back of the scissor blade sliding carefully over the skin of her arm. He cut over her shoulders and down her other arm, the straps of her bra and the top of her white shirt lost to his blades. With a quick snip at the back of her neck the fabric fell from around her arms, bearing them to the air. He sighed sadly, finding the edge by her armpit and slipping the scissors back in. With slow precision he slipped them down her side, slitting the fabric all the way down before going back to repeat the same to the other side.

He hurled the scissors away, making her jump as they crashed against the wall. Ives crumpled to the floor, reaching over and with more care than she was ready for, hauled Hiero face down into his lap. He cradled her carefully, turning her to her side, her face toward his stomach. He pushed away all of the fabric he could, the huge span of her back unmoving, even her soaked sweater clinging with scabs holding tight.

“You know that you were out for an entire day?” His fingers slid over her sides, gently prodding the edges of the red fabric up. She felt it pull, like a sticky duct tape that rips out tiny hairs, as he spoke. “We were almost toast, literally.” He tried to laugh, but it fell horribly flat. Hiero twisted her head, letting it rest just a little more on his thigh, her eyes drawn to his face. He was intent on her, eyes following his hands without deviation, even as he spoke. “Last second type of thing. You would have loved it if you hadn’t passed out. Just the kind of thing that gets you going, love. I hauled you out and then boom, fire.”

She cried out as he tugged hard, pulling the crusted and soaking sweater from her back and tossing it to the side. She felt lighter, colder, but she still had a square of white and the now lose strap of her bra across her back. This is what he meant when he told her to pray: pray that the time in the water had been enough. She felt her heart start to calm: she was full of regret and embarrassment, but also the pain, the hard, stinging pain and he hadn’t even gotten close to the real torture yet.

She wrapped her arms around him, burying her head in his hip and nearly mewling, words and sounds unable to come. “So weak,” he whispered sadly, letting his hands drift into her hair in a soothing motion. “I let you sleep. Brought you here and just let you sleep. There was nothing to be done, my dear, but I couldn’t look at you in this anymore, couldn’t see you like this, love, and not want to kill someone for it.”

“Dead,” she barely muttered, rubbing her nose into his side.

“Yes, yes. The only consolation. They’re all dead.” He leaned down, pressed a kiss to her wet hair. “Still want to kill someone for you.” he sighed, his hands once again slipping across her back. This time his callused finger slide over the punished skin of her back, the white cotton of her shirt pulled away easily in some areas, wouldn’t budge in others. “I still may have to. You’re not healing right, not fast enough. Not enough blood, my dear. You haven’t been keeping up. You’ll need fresh flesh to heal at this point.”

Hiero just moaned, squeezing his waist tighter as he worked his fingers against the scabs that have formed on her back, slowly prying the fabric from them. “At least you’ll be clean. Well, cleaner.”

Ives prodded a scab that wasn’t budging, then moved on, his hands over the blade of her shoulder, working on one that was softer and more pliant. “I couldn’t resist at first, my dear. Over your pretty neck and in your hair, down your chin. It was so easy to just… clean you up.” With a quick flick of his fingers another piece of scabbed cotton pulled free. She squirmed, but it didn’t hurt as she’d expected it to. “But then I’d taste someone else on you and I was furious. Furious to think they’d hurt you. Then I’d think about you hurting them…” His voice drifted away, a tangle of lust and hate, entertwined emotions she wasn’t used to hearing from him as his fingers moved on.

His fingers moved back to the spot in the middle of her back, pulling the fabric up until just the one tight circle of scab and cotton remained. He tugged gently and she spasmed. It wasn’t budging, wasn’t moving. “Bite my leg, love,” he whispered, holding the fabric in one hand and pressing the other tightly around her skin. “This will hurt.”

He didn’t count down, didn’t tell her to be ready, just ripped. She screamed and bit, the pain more than she was prepared for, more than when she was hacked to pieces, more than the tub full of salt and lemon. But it was over in a second and he was pulling her close, gathering her in his arms and pressing the shirt in his palm tight to the wound and cradling her head under his chin. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I know it hurt, I’m sorry.”

His litany didn’t stop, but she couldn’t contain herself any longer. Hiero didn’t know where it came from, but she couldn’t stop crying. They were huge, hysterical, gasping cries, her limps desperately trying to crawl closer and deeper into Ives, as if he could somehow taker her body into his own, as if he could hold her tighter, protect her more. She couldn’t remember ever crying as hard, tears pouring out of her, her body shaking and feeling less and less like her own with every second.

Through it all, Ives held her. He held her tight and squirmed around her clawing until he had her cradled tight to his chest, his legs wrapped around her, as protected and shielded as he could make her even if they were as safe as could be in his home. “I’ve got you,” he whispered when her breathing started to even out, his lips right at her ear. “If I could bring them back just to tear them limb from limb, I would. I would pull them to pieces with my bare hands. The one that did this to you?”

“Temperance,” Hiero whispered, nuzzling into Ives’ neck, letting the soft hairs of his beard slide over her forehead.

He laughed bitterly. “Ah, Temperance.” Ives let his hands drift over her back, his eyes checking on the fresh wound he’d made, watching the blood slow to a dribble before he pressed the sopping cotton back to it. “I’d make her suffer. I’d make her watch while I tore her apart. Better yet, I’d let you do it. We’d flay her alive. Start at the bottom, work our way up. Make her watch while we ate her. While we feast. And fuck.” He held her tight, pressing her close to his chest, his words like a physical ache. “I miss hunting with you.”

Hiero let her hands clutch his shirt, finally relaxed in his arms, finally finding some semblance of safety and calm that had been missing for so long now. “Where… you been?” She managed to croak out, her throat dry and hoarse from screaming.

“Right here,” he whispered, kissing her forehead. “You needed to be on your own for a bit, my little assassin. They needed to see you on your own more, I was around you too much. But I’ve been right here. I’ve been watching you, and them, the whole time.”

She felt boneless, heavy. She couldn’t find it in her to be happy or upset or even disturbed that he’d been watching her. Right now she was just grateful that he was here. Her eyes fluttered shut but she forced them open. He shifted, lifting her with an ease that always surprised her. “Come,” he whispered. “You can sleep soon.”

She closed her eyes, listening as he carried her up a set of carpeted stairs and sat her on the cold lid of a toilet. She watched through heavy lids as he stripped, watched as her slipped her underwear from her hips, dropping chaste kisses up her thighs before laying his head in her lap for just a second. She curled around him, running her fingers through his hair as she held him tight. Carefully he wrapped himself around her, standing them both up. He pulled her close and held her up under the warm, soothing spray of the shower, murmuring to her through every second as he carefully slipped a soapy wash cloth over her skin and shampooed her hair. He toweled her dry with a warm, fluffy towel and carried her back to a bed that was softer than anything she could remember. He held her up, sitting on the edge with her head on his shoulder.

“Last thing,” he whispered, pulling a plate from the bedside table. He held a piece of dark jerky up to her lips, waiting. “You have to. You have to, love, or I need to bring you to a hospital.”

She bit, chewed, and swallowed. She let him feed her, taking each piece as he offered it. She didn’t like the flesh, avoided it as a general rule in favor of the sharp tang of blood, but he’d always been right. It made her stronger, faster, healed her. She didn’t take much, but when she ate it she was always with him.

She didn’t want to eat it now, she didn’t want to be reliant on it, but she couldn’t go to a hospital. She couldn’t be seen in public, she couldn’t be alive. So she ate. She chewed and she ate and she didn’t stop until his mouth met hers sweetly, the tang of his blood on his own lips. She lapped at it, finding the tiny bite he’d made and sucking hard until she didn’t even have the energy to do that. He pulled away, shifting her failing limbs until she was laying on her stomach. Ives fussed around her, pressing his soft dark sheets around her hips and leaving her back clean and open to the air, kissing the itching woulds that were slowly starting to knit themselves back together, the scabs that were left already falling away.

Though she wanted to sleep, Hiero couldn’t look away from him. Something bothered her, at the back of her brain. Something she needed to think about, something about the way Ives touched her and cared for her, but not in a bad way. She reached out, catching his hand and tugged. There wasn’t much force behind it, but she did have enough energy for at least a few more words. “Stay. Please.”

There it was again: it was in the way he looked at her, too. But he simply smiled lightly, sitting on the edge of the bed and laying down, carefully edging closer to her. Hiero didn’t much care for his reticence, and slid herself over, needing to feel him against her. She draped herself into his side, pillowing her head on his chest and throwing a leg over his. “Safe,” she whispered, letting her eyes close at last.

“Yes,” Ives agreed tightly as he kissed her head. “You’re safe.”  


End file.
